Chromebook makes me not miss macbook?

Working with this Chromebook again has been pretty fulfilling. I am typing this using a Asus c300. I have just sold my macbook on my continued journey. My plan was to actually sell my old macbook to acquirer a newer macbook because the old one had battery issues and it was getting dirty and worn from the years of use. I wanted something fast that I can keep for another few years and I still think its ok to get something that you will use everyday if feel like its a tool that  bring pleasure to my life. The crazy thing is , I have really been enjoying this Chromebook. 

The keyboard is very responsive and it feels good to type on. I am typing quickly without any typos (my gramar is human error haha)  so that is showing that the keys are layed out well. The space bar gives me an old mechanical keyboard type bounce back and its a joy. The screen resolution sucks compared to my Macbook air but this Chromebook was dirt cheap. The browsing is fast for me. I noticed the battery life is amazing too I have been typing for 3 hours doing work and now blogging and the battery is at 80 percent! 

I also found out today that there is a easy way to take a screenshot too. I know its something so simple but after using the iphone screenshot daily to work on my daily scripture reading, I find myself taking screenshots all the time. It basically transformed my photo album into a file cabinet. In today's world with much online purchase activity, it comes in handy taking screenshots of confirmations and payments. Especially when many of our email providers trying to protect us from spam, inadvertently hides stuff in clutter or junkmail or the sort. 

The instant on is pretty cool too and the lightness feels pretty good. I became conditioned and even spoiled to thin and light because of the macbook air, but this isnt as bad as I thought it would be. Its light enough. I am also excited because I got a easy hdmi out for my presentation tomorrow. 

I guess the biggest revelation I had since using this chromebook is that my workflow is not really OS dependent. If you read many of my articles in the past you probably seen me go in and out of my desire to use a chromebook or tablet over a mac only to come back to it after 6 months or so. However things really have been changing for me now that I am diving into this idea of Christian minimalism. I love having my computer power just in case I need to tinker or hack away at something, but now that I am trying to get away from the "just in case" precautions and things, I can have something cheap to get just what I need to get done and get out the way to experience other things in life. Is $800 worth me getting the power just in case? Decisions, decisions.... 

Why I am back to Iphone ,,again! a android fanboy treasonous tale

yes yes I the prodigal son returned home to his first love, Apple, yeah I know you heard this story before, I try and try to leave apple to get out of line with sheep but every time I think the grass is greener on the other side, I realize that apple is the best there is! So as the flames begin, continue to read if you’re not one of those fan boys that leave comments like "As soon as I read.... I stop reading your crappy isheep article". 

me with my galaxy mega! 

So I grew bored with IOS 6 on my iPhone 5 and I became lured to the large screen android smartphones I read about on google+. I decided to first go with the S4 after the constant advertisements during the NBA finals and popups, and YouTube ads, it was endless. I loved it initially, seeing something different, I then began reading about how things could be so much better without samcrap so I decided to go Nexus. The NEXUS 4 that was an amazing phone but I found myself missing little goodies like ir remote I used on Samsung, and multi-screen, so I decided, let’s go bigger. That leads me to Samsung Galaxy Mega! Mega is the key word, because this thing was huge! At that time, I was using the nexus 4 and 7. Toting two devices seem to be cumbersome so I wanted to get a device to rule them all. The mega satisfied my needs for a while until once again, I grew angry with the samcrap. So naturally I went to CM11. CM11 was pretty cool but it was full of quirky bugs, which is fun to work with. I used that to argue for android before, the problem though came to when I needed it to work right away, ,, ahh here comes that annoyingly true apple standout, motto "it just works". 

The design and those little UI things began irritating me fairly early though I was able to ignore them. For example:

1.    Snap to the top scrolling. - I was using twitter when I first went back to android and I didn’t realize that it doesn’t have snap to the top scrolling. When you began to scroll through your feed on twitter and google+. Sometimes you want to go back to the top right away, on android you have to begin rolling that finger! It speeds up but that’s the best you can do! Google+ implemented this but the browser still makes me scroll through reddit and xda etc. 

2.    Pull to refresh- listing to podcaster and stitcher forces me to find the little widget to refresh my feed vs just pulling down. On my mega, I was waiting for the green refresh arrow to pop up. It is just much easier to pull "thinking pull in new content. 

3.    Quick settings from the bottom up - ironically Apple actually seem to copy this feature from android but like apple they steal or "gets inspiration" from others who mess up first and clean it up to make it work. I know kitkat has the two finger gesture to separate settings from notifications but I use the calculator and flashlight all the time and I like being able to scroll up and get what I need. I also really like how I get to my stitcher music controls from the bottom separate from the notifications on the top, (because the top notifications still sucks! ) 

4.    Google apps - That was one of the nails in my android owning coffin, the google apps looks so much better on iPhone, it’s like they made it for the iPhone and just ported it on android, or made it an afterthought. Hangouts is awesome on iPhone, the colors pop and options are quick for things like hangout video etc. Google + scrolls nice, and the notifications and everything get out of the way. Yes the feed is harder to see on the small screen but wow! Apple even let my password load on all of my google apps automatically. There was little difference between the sync of my google account over the iOS apps like android apps. It is almost like I never gave up what made android best, instead it feels like a visual change to my android. 

5.     Print - iprint is so seamless, I was toting google cloud print to others but the last

print right there!!!!

week of my android ownership came when I was attempting to print out an emailed coupon. I found myself struggling to connect for some odd reason and the button was inconsistently popping up. I sent the email to my wife’s IPhone and she just tapped and printed! WOW! I couldn’t believe how easy it was, she saw my expression and smirked, "yeah it just works" .. 

6.    I was laughing at how you never see the apple community talk about how they are angry because they still are waiting for the update to kit kat, Samsung just announced that 4.4 is coming to the mega in the next month but the month after that Google will announce the next version. When apple release an update we all get it! No wait, no matter the carrier, it works! (there I go again) 

7.    Apps in general - I was so upset when I was on my surface and mega trying to work with the WWE app on my chromecast and I went through lag, quirks, freezes, and pixelization. I grew ill one day and was regulated to the bedroom with an apple TV and it was a totally different experience. Using my wife’s IPhone I was scrolling in beauty as the app loaded up perfectly looking good. I tried PlayOn which was a lagggy nightmare, but when I tried it on iOS, and it feel worth the lifetime membership I paid. 

8.    Contextual keyboard. - I didn’t really pay too much attention but when it was in Instagram, I saw the @ and # sign in the corner waiting for me, making it easier for me to bang a comment out quickly. I see I type better too with less mistakes, my buddy +Alex Glover always make fun saying "that’s that android keyboard" when he get messages like "hty yoy kile that song? I have seen an improvement in just a couple of days. 

notice the keyboard icons in the corner?

On Another note 

No matter how much I enjoy the user interface and beauty and solidness of hardware, I can’t ignore one MAJOR sore point, this phone is Tiny! It wouldn’t be so glaringly small if I wasn’t coming from a 6.3 inch screen but I am squinty my eyes trying to read the text on websites, and google+. I soon was reminded of one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to go android, a bigger screen. You can defend Apple using a plethora of evidence but this is not one of them. There is no way you can argue that the screen is perfect. With that being said I do like being able to use it with one hand comfortably but I think you can go bigger without messing that comfort up. 

I also miss the easy sharing capabilities with android. When I took a picture it was easy to share to any program I like right from the camera app. I thought I remember doing this so if I am don’t criticize me, criticize apple for not making intuitive enough to notice. Android let all the apps talk to each other so I can share between google+ and Instagram easily. I see I can’t do the same. 

I miss my slide keyboard. It was pretty cool sliding through the keys to type faster even though I ended with many mistakes. 

The notifications are horrible, its random stuff, random things I don’t care about, stock, and it’s to transparent for my old eyes to see differentiate what imp looking at in a glance 

Conclusion 

I came back and at least for now, I can say I am going to stick with the IPhone! I have the option of upgrading in September due to the pricing wars I wrote about in another article. I am hoping the rumored 4.7 inch iPhone will solve the remaining angst I have about the iPhone. I keep looking at that White and Gold beauty, holding the well-constructed metal

Sorry!!!

and glass, opening up with my thumbprint and think to myself, what was I thinking leaving you? ..haha GOD BLESS 

The One Plus One SPEC -tacularly Show How Consumers Benefit From The Price Wars

I'm so excited about the pricing war of smartphones! I am fresh of an exciting Friday rushing to get to a crashed server for the One+1.  I was reading on Android Central (click here)The feature packed phone will have:

•  the snap dragon 801 processor, you know, like the one in the S5, 
• 3 gigs or ram, twice as much as that um other phone, same as the note 3, 
• 13 megapixel Sony Camera 
• 5.5 1080 p screen on par with the top smartphones today 
• and 16 gigs of ram 
• Google apps (full Google integration)

• cm11 (no need to root and brick for an hour or so trying to get it) 
• all for the low price of $299 ; $50 off the steal of a phone Nexus 5 

So lets bring this into context. The suggested subsidized price for the note 3 was $299, that's not unlocked, that's tied to a expensive phone plan that helps providers make up the cost, that's the shackled price that comes with 2 years of baggage called a contract! We raved at the Moto x with in some cases half the specs at that price. In the past, people joked that unlocked phones where smartphones of yesteryear helping companies to clean out inventory! (HTC EVO , Samsung Galaxy S ).. We then get the low ram low capacity Asian Market variants but still nothing you proudly can pull out. But man have things changed!

We now can spend less than $400 ( a subsidized level price), and have a phone we can proudly show off! What makes me most excited, this One Plus One is better than many if not all the current phones on the market right now. It has the operating system that most geeks use anyway when we buy a Samsung or HTC phone. Ok so it does not have a heart rate sensor , but I think I can pass on that haha.

We are reaching a monumental moment in tech history. The market is working at its best. Consumers are benefiting from the pricing war giving us several sub $400 smartphones, these are the ones I am aware of so far, and a rounded estimated price.

• Motorola X $379
• Motorola G $179 
• Nexus 5 - $350 
• One plus One - $300 

Tmobile Uncarrier initiative, a symbol of capitalism effect in tech

Allow me to think out loud about techs effect on capitalism. At&t recently allowed its customers to drop their contract for another plan. This new plan will be $15 less than the current contract it offers. Many people say this is a response to Tmobiles uncarrier push offering to pay the ETF if you drop At&T for Tmobile. I don't think this is a good deal still and I would rather opt for smart talk or something similar but there is something  more to this story that is much more important. At&t and Verizon changing their plan means Tmobile is a true source of disruption! That's whats important for the market place. Consumers depend on disruption to low prices and provide better services for the consumer. I guess the backing of Deutsche Telecom affords Tmobile the opportunity to pay off ETF's, offer $30 non contract plans, and allow multiple subsidies. This type of shaking up the industry threatens the status quo when we feel we must put up with blatantly unfair telecom services.
In that same vein we have Disney doing it in offering online video, Netflix  with streaming, and Spotify with music, google drive  with office utilities. The stalwarts of capitalism are smiling, The true effect of the tech revolution. ,,,,,just my thoughts
GOD BLESS